June 3, 2012

MIT economist Daron Acemoglu has a blog in which he advances his world-shattering insight that the reason some countries are poorer than others is because they have worse institutions bequeathed them by European imperialists. (Personally, I think he can take it a step further and point out that what's even more true of poor countries in general is that they have less money.) On his blog, Acemoglu searches out past examples of people who don't quite agree with him to show them the error of their ways.

For example, in Why Is Haiti So Poor? Acemoglu and James Robinson dismiss all non-institutional reasons for why Haiti is poorer than the adjoining Dominican Republic, such as that Haiti has a more African culture (voodoo, zombies, etc.) than the D.R. (And of course, that almost all the white people in Haiti, men, women, and children, were systematically massacred in 1804 might have something to do with Haiti's subsequent lack of economic dynamism, but that's the wrong kind of institutionalism for Acemoglu to even mention.)

Acemoglue particularly doesn't like Jared Diamond's more broadbased comparison of Haiti and the Dominican Republic in Diamond's 2005 bestseller Collapse, which includes an explanation of how prevailing winds, topography, rainfall patterns, population density, land ownership patterns and politics, have worked together to make Haiti one of the most deforested and eroded countries on earth while the D.R. still has much forest cover. (The aerial picture above shows Haiti on the left, the Dominican Republic on the right.)

Diamond’s comparison of the differing fates of Haiti and Dominican Republic, both in Collapse and after the Haitian earthquake reads like 40 proof crimethink compared to Acemoglu/Robinson’s embarrassing handling of the same subject. Diamond even mentions that the megalomaniacal mixed race D.R. dictator Trujillo’s policy of whitening the D.R. population by recruiting European immigrants (Trujillo was the only national leader enthusiastic about bringing in German Jewish refugees in the late 1930s), has helped the D.R. relative to Haiti. Acemoglu’s head would explode if that thought ever lodged in his brain!

Here’s what Jared Diamond wrote in The Guardian (of all places) after the Haiti earthquake in 2010 on why the Dominican Republican isn’t as impoverished as Haiti:

“A second social and political factor is that the Dominican Republic – with its Spanish-speaking population of predominantly European ancestry – was both more receptive and more ­attractive to European immigrants and investors than was Haiti with its Creole-speaking population composed overwhelmingly of black former slaves. … Hence European immigration and investment were negligible and restricted by the constitution in Haiti after 1804 but eventually became important in the Dominican Republic. Those Dominican immigrants included many middle-class businesspeople and skilled professionals who contributed to the country’s development.”

Okay, the basic difference between Diamond and Acemoglu is that Diamond is smart enough and well-informed enough that his political correctness is fairly disingenuous. His Guns, Germs, and Steel megaseller was a big step backwards in brilliance of insight from his earlier The Third Chimpanzee; but creating an elaborate rationalization for political correctness in GGS at least made him a rich man. (Here's my my 1997 review of Guns, Germs, & Steel.) He dodged debates with his best-informed critics because he understood the weaknesses in GGS. And, if you read his later stuff carefully, you can notice subtle signs that he’s actually a more heterodox thinker than GGS would suggest (e.g., a close reading of “Collapse’s” complaints about the effects of immigration into America and Australia on the environment shows he's a closet immigration restrictionist).

In contrast,while Acemoglu’s political correctness certainly has promoted his career, as far as I can tell, though, Acemoglu is a True Believer. He comes across as being wholly untainted by the slightest doubts in the conventional wisdom.

It's actually rather amusing to see the newer generation of True Blue dopes turning on the aging cynics who taught them too well.

"Well, that's because they look whitish, you see. The Labor party, the one that instituted the White Australia Policy, is fully behind the scheme to bring them in."

If they really felt the need to attract immigrants from that part of the world, they should have tried to bring in Lebanese Christians instead. I doubt that they would cause nearly as much trouble in Australia as the Muslims have done.

5. Immigration. Few people have any problem with the immigration of the best and the brightest from India, China and anywhere else in the world. Here the focus is on undocumented aliens from Mexico. Yet it is a fact that our economy needs and employs them. The agricultural industries of California, Arizona and New Mexico depend on them. Every salad you eat, every fruit juice you drink, inescapably involved an undocumented worker at some stage of its journey to you.

It is not true that these workers "are taking American jobs," because there seem to be few Americans willing to perform such labor at the prevailing rates. Nor would we be willing to pay the price at the produce counter. The more measured and humane approach of the Obama administration is a wiser one. I also believe most Americans understand why the children of such laborers might be allowed into American schools: Do we want a sizable population between 6 and 16 of children with no education?

He is definitely skeptical about unrestricted immigration but being a U of C Jewish American academic with a father who was a professor at Harvard, and psychoanalyst wife he must layer that skepticism with lots of PC sauce so you don't notice unless you read carefully. You can tell he wants to venture into politically incorrect territory, but is scared to death of being called the horrible R word. His book GGS really looks very similar in structure to Carleton Coon's The Origin of Races published in 1962. I know this because one of the local libraries in the area has that now very un PC book still on the shelves were it could stripping American youth of the self-esteem necessary to overcome racial power structures.It even has "examples" of different "races" sprinkled throughhout just like Coon's publication which only evil white racists would ever believe. My guess is that GGS is a left wing attempt to be more scientifically coherent than the relatively easy target of of Stephen Jay Gould's "Mismeasure of Man" which is still quite popular with social science departments in most American universities and colleges, but is probably viewed by biological scientists to be just as ridiculous as a lot of Gould's other ventures into areas he wasn't an expert in.

Jared Diamond, He is either a moron or a smart businessman who writes books for the Politically correct indoctrinated fools(guns Germs and Steel). Oh how many fools worship his ideas! I can understand old fools believing in his drivel but I thought our young people were more intelligent. But I forget that our young people have been through an intense propaganda campaign starting from kindergarten and into college! The propaganda of all(including groups) being created equal.

It is the true believer’s ability to “shut his eyes and stop his ears” to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy. He cannot be frightened by danger nor disheartened by obstacle not baffled by contradictions because he denies their existence.

I read Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel a long time ago. My house is a mess.May I be forgiven for not looking up the references?

Diamond struck me as honest if a little whacko.

He attacked the eco hero Gore because Gore's wealth comes from mining - very dirty. And he praises oil production in the jungle - very low impact.

So Diamond is not just a predictable mindless ideologue like the earnest young people who come to my door raising money to save the whales (or whatever).

But I was troubled when he expressed admiration for the Dominican Republic's policy of protecting the forests with machine guns firing from helicopters . He strikes me as someone who would have hung the peasants for killing the King's Deer.

I'm with Robin Hood on this one.

BTW the main insight of GGS is the notion that ideas spread faster in horizontally oriented continents than in vertically oriented ones. This is the main defense of the primitiveness in Africa and the Americas. I seem to remember that he claimed it as his own original idea. Yet it was published earlier in one of Sowell's books. Sowell only mentioned it in passing.

Sailer sez:MIT economist Daron Acemoglu has a blog in which he advances his world-shattering insight that the reason some countries are poorer than others is because they have worse institutions bequeathed them by European imperialists. A critique of Acemoglu is valid but Acemoglu actually makes no such blanket argument. He says ONE of the main reasons some countries are poorer is because of the legacy of EUropean imperialists- part of a suite of historical problems. In this he is actually joined by conservative economists like PT Bauer who agree. Bauer notes for example that the heavy-handed bureaucratic mechanisms (like some agri-monoplolist marketing baords) left behind by the colonialists to extract income from their colonies have become even more oppressive burdens after the colonialsts left. HE and one of the foremost conservative analysts of Third WOrld development actually agree on this score. Acemoglu can be criticized for putting too much emphasis on the point, but he in no way claims that Haiti's poverty is all the legacy of colonialism.

For example, in Why Is Haiti So Poor? Acemoglu and James Robinson dismiss all non-institutional reasons for why Haiti is poorer than the adjoining Dominican Republic..

The weaknesses of this claim is that "institutions" are very much part of actual results on the ground and generate certain outcomes. This is a basic pont made by conservative analysts from Sowell, to Bauer, to Friedman- institutions count. Acemoglu is absolutely correct to point out the central influence of the brutal extractive system of Haiti where the best arable land focused on sugar and the viciousness of a system where most of the population died off within a few years -having to be replenished with constant new slave cargoes from Africa. Even Sowell notes this reality and contrasts the brutal system of places like Haiti with the (relatively) less harsh outcomes for slaves in the US. Furthermore Acemoglu points out that as late as WWII, Haiti and Santo DOmingo BOTH had about the same per capita income. What caused the income gap was political mismanagement in Haiti- Acemoglu freely admits this on his blog and does not say this is due to "colonialism".

Acemoglue particularly doesn't like Jared Diamond's more broadbased comparison of Haiti and the Dominican Republic in Diamond's 2005 bestseller Collapse, which includes an explanation of how prevailing winds, topography, rainfall patterns, population density, land ownership patterns and politics, have worked together to make Haiti one of the most deforested and eroded countries on earth while the D.R. still has much forest cover. Fair enough but Acemoglu does not at all deny that a myriad of factors contributed to Haiti's problems. In fact he says poor government is one main problem QUOTE: "Haiti was different, without such a strong state or political control of the army, the period after 1930 saw political instability not extractive growth.." Hardly the case of a man hiding behind political correctness. Indeed in his book WHY NATIONS ARE POOR, Acemoglu on page 115, explicity notes part of Haiti's problem is ineffective modern governments, among other things.

In fact Acemoglu does NOT dispute Diamond's package of explanations much at all on the blog. In fact Acemoglu notes that Diamond CONFIRMS his analysis on certain points- quote: "Diamond recognizes that this higher population density was the result of the plantation agriculture in Haiti based on the import of slaves, and also mentions other social and historical factors)." In short, Diamond himself recognizes the key role played by slavery institutions in Haiti's poverty. Hardly a man "destroying" Acemoglu with political incorrectness.

"His Guns, Germs, and Steel megaseller was a big step backwards in brilliance of insight "

My interpretation of GGS is that typical modern Europeans are smarter than modern Africans because for most of European history there was more use for smart people due to better opportunities for trade, animal domestication, transportation, ect. So higher IQ is the result of geography and environmental influences.

To site an example from his books, Eskimos had no trouble defeating Europeans in Greenland. Eskimos had developed sophisticated maritime and weapons technology that was simply superior to what the Icelanders brought with them.

The Amer-Indians developed rifled blow guns, which halted the Conquistadors GGS.

There is no question that even primitive people can produce a generation of high level thinkers. The problem both the Eskimos and the South American Indians had was taking things to the next level technologically which was impossible due to their isolation and lack of local resources. So they both stagnated while Europe and Asia progressed.

This is also a cautionary tale for 'The West, although the stagnation of China in the 1800s seems more applicable. Average IQ is IMO not a constant and can change rapidly, in both directions, from generation to generation.

It is not true that these workers "are taking American jobs," because there seem to be few Americans willing to perform such labor at the prevailing rates. Nor would we be willing to pay the price at the produce counter. -- Roger Ebert

I'm so tired of this lie. It's not even a particularly clever lie. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see the first problem here: if it's such a good idea to bring foreign workers into the country to pick our vegetables and write our computer programs, then why aren't we pushing to bring them in to drive our trucks and teach our children and nurse our patients and produce our TV shows? Why do we let Americans demand such outrageously high wages for those jobs, driving up the cost of those products, when we think it would be unreasonable to allow the same thing to happen with food or software?

Also, like I pointed out in another thread, most of the cost of food today is in the packaging, shipping, marketing, and so on. A tiny percentage goes to the laborer in the field (American or otherwise). Raise his wages -- heck, quadruple his wages -- and you won't raise food prices in the grocery store that much. We put up with gas prices jumping 10 cents from one day to the next; but we act like if potatoes go up 10 cents per pound for the first time in a decade, we'll all starve to death. It's crap, and the math to know it's crap isn't that complicated.

I don't believe Ebert is stupid enough to believe what he's saying, so he's just lying, and he doesn't even respect his audience enough to come up with a lie that holds any water.

"It is not true that these workers "are taking American jobs," because there seem to be few Americans willing to perform such labor at the prevailing rates... I also believe most Americans understand why the children of such laborers might be allowed into American schools: Do we want a sizable population between 6 and 16 of children with no education?"

Who decides the prevailing rates? We could average manual labor costs down a lot further by importing any of the billions of people who live on $2/day.

One thing's for sure, I shouldn't have to compete with out-sourced and in-sourced indians in computer science while lawyers make laws to protect themselves from similar competition.

As growth runs into resource limitations and the world looks more zero-sum every day, why would we want to educate the next generation of immigrants? (though this is partly playing devils advocate as I think the future is a huge question mark at the moment, and could break either way.)

Are people even capable of performing competent work into their 70s (or even their 60s)? A lot of companies and professions have mandatory retirement in the mid-60s precisely due to competency questions.

We cannot assume that solving the social security funding problem is merely a question of will to work.

"If farm wages rose 40 percent, and this wage increase were passed on to consumers, average spending on fresh fruits and vegetables would rise about $15 a year, the cost of two movie tickets. However, for a typical seasonal farm worker, a 40 percent wage increase could raise earnings from $10,000 for 1,000 hours of work to $14,000 — lifting the wage above the federal poverty line."

This Martin guy is pretty good. Here is another article that references his work:

"...according to Martin. On a $1 head of lettuce, the farm worker gets about 6 or 7 cents, roughly 1/15th of the retail price. Even a big run-up in the cost of labor can't hit the consumer very hard."

"Bauer notes for example that the heavy-handed bureaucratic mechanisms (like some agri-monoplolist marketing baords) left behind by the colonialists to extract income from their colonies have become even more oppressive burdens after the colonialsts left."

Yeah I think Bauer makes the point somewhere that it was really bad timing for decolonization to have come just as colonial regimes (taking their cue from intellectual currents in Europe) had reached a new and unprecedented height of state control of economic life.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is hardly a PC book. There is a lame PC frame narrative going on, but aside from the first and last 10-20 pages, the bulk of that big book is about the necessary conditions of agriculture, as well as its consequences, on a material level.

Few PC people would make it further than a few chapters, though. "Dude, what is all this science doing in here -- just tar and feather the racists already!" They'd rather wolf down some easily digestible junk by an airhead like Gould. Or at most listen to a lite interview with Diamond on NPR.

It's a great popular science book that everyone could learn from. For one thing, they'd be a lot healthier if they dampened down or scrapped their agricultural diet. Diamond is pretty detailed in spelling out how unnatural it is for humans to gorge on grains, as though they were pigeons.

It's actually rather amusing to see the newer generation of True Blue dopes turning on the aging cynics who taught them too well.

It'd be even more amusing if the consequences weren't so grave.

Grover,

Indeed in his book WHY NATIONS ARE POOR, Acemoglu on page 115, explicity notes part of Haiti's problem is ineffective modern governments, among other things.

One point I never see made in these sorts of books or essays aimed at popular readership is: "Because they're not yet rich."

Prosperity isn't something you can just order up on demand, eg get the right institutions in place and you will have prosperity. Prosperity is something you can only grow into, typically over many decades (depending on how "right" you get things).

Many countries described (accurately) as "poor" today are in fact well on their way to being much less poor in the near future, and indeed well on their way to being "rich." Deliberating over "why they are" poor, I would argue, could well do much more harm than good if impatient do-gooders demand more be "done for them" right away.

Anyway, however guilty of Acemoglu is of that tendency I'm not sure, but he does seem to be a HBD-denier (whether passive or active), so ultimately it's just more PC BS that ignores an obviously impactful factor in societal development.

“Well, that's because they look whitish, you see. The Labor party, the one that instituted the White Australia Policy, is fully behind the scheme to bring them in.“

Malcolm Fraser, Liberal Party Prime Minister (despite its moniker the Liberal Party in Australia is the mainstream center-right party) was responsible for the large influx of Lebanese refugees at the end of the 1970's and start of the 1980's. Fraser was highly sympathetic towards the flight of religious refugees from strife-wracked areas, a disposition often imputed to the fact that his mother, Una Woolf, was of Jewish descent via her paternal line.

Neither of the major Australian political parties seem especially inclined to encourage Muslim immigration at present, given the behavior and reputation of these recent immigrants in urban areas.

prevailing winds, topography, rainfall patterns, population density, land ownership patterns and politics, have worked together to make Haiti one of the most deforested and eroded countries on earth while the D.R. still has much forest cover. (The aerial picture above shows Haiti on the left, the Dominican Republic on the right.)

Wow, Ive never seen such a precise illustration of micro-climte before, amazing how all these factors mirror the border exactly. Im surprised there hasnt been more research.

”Well, if you read the statistics, Australia is choosing immigrants with dramatically higher IQ than the founding stock Australians.

So the Australian policy looks to be the most HBD aware of any country in the world with the possible exception of Singapore“

Key sources of immigration to Australia at present are mainland China, India, and the Chinese diaspora communities of South-east Asia. I'm not sure if it's a matter of explicit, self-aware HBD policy on the part of the Australian government, as much as the fact that these places happen to be primary sources of eager immigrants at present - i.e. fortuitous circumstance. Indonesians, for some reason, do not seem too strongly inclined to migrate southwards.

Agnostic said:

"It's a great popular science book that everyone could learn from. For one thing, they'd be a lot healthier if they dampened down or scrapped their agricultural diet. Diamond is pretty detailed in spelling out how unnatural it is for humans to gorge on grains, as though they were pigeons."

Would you say that your high-protein paleolithic diet is the reason for your impressive, Alpha-typical physical dimensions, as well as exceptional popularity with nubile jail bait?

Malcolm Fraser, Liberal Party Prime Minister (despite its moniker the Liberal Party in Australia is the mainstream center-right party) was responsible for the large influx of Lebanese refugees at the end of the 1970's and start of the 1980's. Fraser was highly sympathetic towards the flight of religious refugees from strife-wracked areas, a disposition often imputed to the fact that his mother, Una Woolf, was of Jewish descent via her paternal line.

But there was also a sizable Lebanese population (predominantly Christian) that dated back to the 50s -- a period during which a more robust "White Australia" attitude prevailed politically. (Not disputing your account of Fraser's policy, just sayin'.)

One of the pet conspiracy theories the left constantly touts is that Haiti is the poorest country in the Hemisphere is because the U.S. wants to set a floor on wages. KPFA and the Nation repeatedly rant on about how it is our national policy to keep Haitians down. Evil capitalists can then threaten their workers by pointing out that there is always someone who will work for $2 a day. If only America would have supported Arastide and sent massive aid on a permanent basis, Haiti would now be like Switzerland.

Well, if you read the statistics, Australia is choosing immigrants with dramatically higher IQ than the founding stock Australians. "

Importing a new overclass. How can that not end in tears?

Exactly.

-------------------------------

If Chinese have the wherewith-all to become a new over class, then why do they bother going to Australia to do it? Why not just stay in China and be the over class? They don't seem to be an over class in Vancouver, B.C., where they make up about one third of the population. It is true they are hugely over-represented in the sciences at universities, but the Sikhs (another third of the population in Vancouver) seem just as good at making money and much more inclined to go into law and politics, than the Chinese. Both the Chinese and Sikhs are handicapped by a tendency towards corruption and dishonesty which is how things are done in their old countries. Hopefully the subsequent generations of them will adopt the less corrupt western culture, or we are all screwed.

Well, if you read the statistics, Australia is choosing immigrants with dramatically higher IQ than the founding stock Australians.

Dramatically higher IQ than founding stock Australians? Jeesh, I don't know about all that. The one thing that is certain about immigrants to Australia, though, is that a lot of Asian girls are among them. And that's good news for both the Asian girls and Australian white guys. Just read Steve's classic "Is Love Colorblind" if you don't know what I mean!

Historically, Haitis defaulted big-time on virtually every loan that the western world advanced it. Despite genociding French people, the French, for some reason, are and have been very keen to loan Haiti money. I believe that in the 19th century the western powers were so fed-up with habitual Haitian loan defaulting that they actually took over the Haitian customs service to get their money back. The fact that wseterners were willing to lend money to Haiti way back then exposes the lie that Haiti is undeveloped due to western hatred or indifference.

No anation on earth suffered more from 'colonialism' than the Republic of Ireland (Eire) where English colonialsm started in the middle ages and didn't finish until 1921. Basically English landlords took over all the best land, ran it as big profit making estates, sent the money back to England and let the indigenous Irish eke out a miserable living on marginal land, whilst their numbers exponated and were periodically culled by mass famine. During the famines Ireland continued to export vast quantities of beef, butter, grain etc to England - a great deal of which was extracted as rent from starving peasants who were forced to live on a few potatoes (and nothing else) a day. And yet within a life-span of the British being ejected from Eire, Eire had a per capita GDP vastly bigger than the UK's, and furthermore most of the 'institutions' bequeathed by England remained fully intact and functioning.

"Australia is choosing immigrants with dramatically higher IQ than the founding stock Australians."

Great, so they're importing their very own foreign Herrenvolk-slash-hostile elite to systematically take away from them everything the founding stock built that made the immigrants want to go there in the first place.

That oughta work out well.

Macquarie University will be packed to the gills with Hindus and Chinese; but who wants to bet we'll see the new overlords build Mo Tzu University and Brahamputra College, and fill them with Anglo-Celtic scholarship kids?

In contrast,while Acemoglu’s political correctness certainly has promoted his career, as far as I can tell, though, Acemoglu is a True Believer. He comes across as being wholly untainted by the slightest doubts in the conventional wisdom.

I'd love to the top 50 or so opinion makers get grilled on what parts of the conventional wisdom they doubt. Maybe the responses could be anonymous so we could get interesting answers.

One 'rightist' thing about GGS is it doesn't blame white dominance on white evil but geo-accidents of history.In oth wds, whites became rich and powerful not out of greed and powerlust but cuz geo-historical winds were behind their back.

Australian leadership may find some African or Mexicans to import if they think it may prove how not-racist they are."

Too true. Australia is not governed by the wise. It has lucked out in every respect, including that it's Mexicans are Chinese, by dint of geography. HBD is certainly not alive. Unfamiliarity breeds naivety. For years, 'Negros' were exemplified by WWII memories of swell GIs, genial Caribbean cricketers and ex NBA stars.

Now significant population of real Africans is emerging, leading to gang crime, oops, racial tension and discrimination, in the big cities.

No anation on earth suffered more from 'colonialism' than the Republic of Ireland

Blimey!

I would have thought you could just about make an argument that various American-Indian nations suffered considerably more from colonialism than the Irish.

Or how about the Picts? Now there's a people you don't hear much about these days. Although its not polite to mention it, they were wiped out by a people called the Scoti who came from..er..Ireland. And the country that Picts used to live but which was colonised by the Scoti is now called...Scotland. Not Pictland.

Something else maybe worth pointing out is that there is a reason Ulster Protestants often call themselves Ulster-Scots and their descendants in the USA are sometimes known as the Scotch-Irish - can you think why that might be?

Basically English landlords took over all the best land, ran it as big profit making estate Yes, sometimes, but as before do please try to avoid blaming the English for stuff the Scots did. And, in any case, the Normans did that to the English too and it was common practice throughout Europe and it was called Feudalism.

I don't have anything against the Irish but as an Englishman at the bottom of the class pyramid I get very bored with being responsible for everything that is wrong in the world and sometimes get the urge to help some of the poor people I have oppressed with a little perspective.

According the Niall Ferguson, although the Irish and the Scots made up just 10% of the 'British' population (lets not forget the Irish were British up until 1922) they made up 50% of British colonial administrators, pirates, soldiers, sailors, slavers, adventurers and emigrants. That would include all those dreadful people invading everywhere and enslaving everyone and stealing all those poor innocent people's stuff.

I've even read a claim that at one point 75% of the Royal Navy was Irish.

Think on that the next time you're at Victims of Colonialism Conference and sitting holding hands with all the peoples of the world singing Kumbaya.

btw steve, your current favorite HBO show had a shiksa getting her comeuppance by a gay guy, being jealous of her frumpy scots-irish buddy for landing a boyfriend while her own BF broke with up her and hooked up with another girl in just two weeks, and then making out with another shiksa in the latest episode.

Hopefully the subsequent generations of them will adopt the less corrupt western culture, or we are all screwed.

Can you provide any articulable basis for this hope? People choose the path of least resistance, and at this point even the West is enthusiastically deconstructing Western culture. Like Brimelow says, it will all end in tears.

Someone should study Romney's cousins ranch complex in Mexico? Why couldn't there be other productive ranch's like that in Northern Mexico? From what I understand they employ a lot of local labor and good relations there.

Do they have some back-channel market connections because of their history or could Northern Mexico be more productive in general?

One 'rightist' thing about GGS is it doesn't blame white dominance on white evil but geo-accidents of history.In oth wds, whites became rich and powerful not out of greed and powerlust but cuz geo-historical winds were behind their back.

Yes. But then he kind of says "But Whites were greedy and evil, and "stole ideas" and got a bit from that anyway". It's basically 90% geographical determinism 10% "evil Western culture!".

It still says, more or less, "To the extent the West exists as a culture and genetic identity, independent of geographical luck, it is horribly baleful and should be replaced as quick as possible".

It just dismisses the West as an entity rather than a confluence of geographical conditions to a greater extent than is common among anti-West groups.

I don't believe Ebert is stupid enough to believe what he's saying, so he's just lying, and he doesn't even respect his audience enough to come up with a lie that holds any water

It's not part of a movie review, so why's he even opining on the issue? When you get restless to expand beyond about the domain in which you gained your notoriety, you still want your "new" audience to be the same old cool folks, so the available positions are predetermined. Sportswriters have been doing this for years. So they all pretend to believe the paucity of black baseball players is due to insufficient public funds.

"Inclusive" sounds so much better than "run along non-corrupt Western inspired capitalist and constitutional lines". It's just a co-incidence that most of the "inclusive" places are run by higher IQ races. Nothing to see here folks, just move along.

One of the things that Acemoglu (unintentionally) points out is that a country does not have to be majority white in order to be economically successful, as long white people are in charge. Haiti was the "Pearl of the Antilles" - the richest French colony , the Saudi Arabia of its day due to sugar exports. But once they killed or expelled all the people who were capable of running complex systems, conducting successful businesses, they became poor as dirt. See also Zimbabwe, Cuba, etc. Again these people just happened to be white. Cuba, BTW, had a racial element to its revolution that was masked by the fact that Castro was super white himself.

One curiosity of the genetics approach is that former British colonies seem to have done better than French without easy genetic explanations. Compare Haiti to Barbados or Jamaica. Compare Algeria or Congo(Belgium) to India.

Why is Pakistan so much more screwed up than India, or even Bangladesh when they have similar genetic backgrounds.

As for the US side the the control of Hawaii, Panama, Philippines, Japan, S Korea, and Germany seem to have gone well. Sadly the American Empire will likely be remembered for the failures in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. (Is there a genetic explanation for this divergence?)

And Albertosaurus, please do NOT tell us that you have BDSM friends who are into this sort of thing...

What a nasty thing to say. I'm a consistent advocate for understanding and tolerance on sexual matters. And you?

This sort of thing is not unprecedented. Only a year or so ago there was a guy in England who advertised in the papers or on the Web for someone he could kill and eat. The disturbing thing was that he got so many volunteers. He picked one guy. And slowly ate him as he bled to death. He was tried and convicted of murder as I remember. I think his defense was that it was only an assisted suicide.

Most of these far out cases seem to involve gay men. I'm not sure what that means.

Normal human sex involves a significant component of Dominance and submission. Just like in our closest primate relatives. This makes some people uncomfortable but I can't help that. The fact that many women want a man to spank them has nothing to do these serial killers

Cannibalism isn't BDSM. It's a crime usually committed by homosexuals. Jeffery Dahmer (a gay man) was the most famous. John Wayne Gacy was another gay man. I don't remember if he ate his victims. There seem to be a lot of gay men in the ranks of the serial killers.

In case you've forgotten, I favor eliminating homosexuality. That would probably largely eliminate these extreme and bizarre cannibals.

"Few people have any problem with the immigration of the best and the brightest from India, China and anywhere else in the world. Here the focus is on undocumented aliens from Mexico. Yet it is a fact that our economy needs and employs them. The agricultural industries of California, Arizona and New Mexico depend on them. Every salad you eat, every fruit juice you drink, inescapably involved an undocumented worker at some stage of its journey to you."

They make their own replacements, you know. No need for imports. Also, we already have unskilled workers on welfare. So, no we don't need any imported unskilled workers.

"Institutions sometimes don't seem to matter much...I see that Chile is at $14k and Argentina is at $11k. Chile is considered a clean non-corrupt country. Argentina is considered among the worst in South America.

All that corruption eradication and just $3k per person to show for it?"

Argentina, about which it is often said "they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity". Being mostly run by descendants of Germans or Italians Argentina really has no excuse, certainly as compared to Brazil with her large black population (lots of slaves, those Portugese) and stone age indians wandering into the cities.

Regarding Chile: Its been less than 40 years for Chile's vastly superior institutions to make a difference. Pinochet did not seize power until 1973. Prior to that it was run like most other LatAm basket cases. Say what you will about Pinochet's methods (and as far as breaking eggs to make an omelette goes, Pinochet's methods were pretty chintsy: no more than 3,000 were killed and that is the lefty estimate) he left a modern, functioning, well-run country in his wake. Contrast that with every lefty dictator that killed orders of magnitude more and leave only a poverty-stricken hellhole behind.

Point being, Chile is already 27% ahead of Argentina and I suspect that gap will continue to widen.

Few people have any problem with the immigration of the best and the brightest from India, China and anywhere else in the world.

Wrong. It is folly to import a hostile elite. Even if these people didn't have a track record of tribalism and bigotry toward other races and classes, it isn't in the interest of high-achieving Americans to swamp themselves with rivals. As Steve Sailer once wrote, you shouldn't want your children to have to compete with anyone from anywhere.

Here the focus is on undocumented aliens from Mexico. Yet it is a fact that our economy needs and employs them.

It is not a fact that we need then. There are a lot of Americans who could do the work they are doing. And agriculture only accounts for about 6-10% of the job theft by the infiltrators.

The agricultural industries of California, Arizona and New Mexico depend on them. Every salad you eat, every fruit juice you drink, inescapably involved an undocumented worker at some stage of its journey to you."

No, not inescapably. Build a wall on the border and pass laws that could imprison infiltrators for three years, as they have done in Israel.

Wrong. It is folly to import a hostile elite. Even if these people didn't have a track record of tribalism and bigotry toward other races and classes, it isn't in the interest of high-achieving Americans to swamp themselves with rivals. As Steve Sailer once wrote, you shouldn't want your children to have to compete with anyone from anywhere.

In addition, it's also a shameless lie to say that "few people mind". Plenty of people mind and they are perfectly within their rights to mind. It's psychopathic immigrationists who need to explain themselves, not restrictionists.

As Steve Sailer once wrote, you shouldn't want your children to have to compete with anyone from anywhere.

Although I'm not convinced this is really the question, there is the matter of whether it is better to serve in Heaven or reign in Hell?

The only consistent principles are those of citizenism - the country is the property of its citizens, you should exercise your stake in your property to benefit yourself (and those who you care about) and punish the representatives to whom you delegate that exercise when they do not.

I see that Chile is at $14k and Argentina is at $11k. Chile is considered a clean non-corrupt country. Argentina is considered among the worst in South America.

Actually, when you consider purchasing power parity (PPP) GDP -- a much better measure for international comparisons -- the disparity is even narrower or otherwise favors Argentina (depending on whose stats you rely on).

Back to the point, though, you're making the mistake of taking a snap shot of the present (or the short run) and making long run prognostications on the basis of it. If you assume that corruption does cripple economic growth, then a country that sorts out its corruption problems can expect to grow at a higher rate, meaning that while the differences between the two countries may be close to imperceptible in the short run or trumped by other factors, in the long run there could be a tremendous difference. For example, Egypt and Madagascar had virtually the same per capita GDP in 1960 and in 1970. But by 1980, Egypt's per cap GDP was double that of Madagascar, and by 2010 six times that of Madagascar. Now, Egypt's not exactly known around the world for the incorruptibility of its government or the brilliance of its institutions, but I don't think it's wrong to assume they've been more effective than Madagascar's over the period in question and that that greater effectiveness, slight though it may only be (particularly when viewed from an efficient western perspective) has made a considerable difference. (Other factors besides institutions and their effectiveness also made a difference, of course, and probably mattered much more so, not that someone like Acemoglu would admit it -- or even know anything about it.)

I'd be interested in just how much longer Chile has been oh so less corrupt than Argentina. I doubt there's much more than ten years in it. So if it's actually true that there is today a significant disparity in corruption levels, all else being equal (and imo it pretty much is), if that disparity persists, I'd expect to Chile pull much further ahead in the next twenty or so years. But I think it's pretty unlikely that such a wide disparity in corruption would persist for so long because internet communication makes people far less tolerant of their government's failings when compared to the progress of their neighbors than ever used to be the case.

Only a year or so ago there was a guy in England who advertised in the papers or on the Web for someone he could kill and eat. The disturbing thing was that he got so many volunteers. He picked one guy. And slowly ate him as he bled to death. He was tried and convicted of murder as I remember. I think his defense was that it was only an assisted suicide.

Germany and Armin Meiwes I believe..

A similar thing did happen in the UK, but did not involve a consensual victim AFAICT - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/chef-joins-list-of-cannibal-killers-965227.html. So I can understand the confusion.

A recent odd thing has involved a Japanese aesexual/transsexual man named Mao Sugiyama (and saddest looking faced person ever from google internet search) selling his genitals to be consumed by elite buyers. (Although not exactly cannibalism)

Cannibal serial killing is not confined to gays though (even if it occurs amongst them at increased frequency) - e.g. Issei Sagawa, the Japanese man who "murdered and cannibalized a Dutch woman named Renée Hartevelt". And the recent Chinese cases of the Cannibal Brothers - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shen_Changyin_and_Shen_Changping - and the Yunnan Cannibal - http://www.danwei.com/cannibal-serial-killer-arrested-in-yunnan/. I cannot think of any non-Asian cases at the moment.

There are various hits for cannibal killings - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/chef-joins-list-of-cannibal-killers-965227.html.

I am not sure whether it is a crime generally committed by homosexuals but many of the cases seem to.

As Steve Sailer once wrote, you shouldn't want your children to have to compete with anyone from anywhere.

Although I'm not convinced this is really the question, there is the matter of whether it is better to serve in Heaven or reign in Hell?

Since when are countries run by European-derived men considered as hells on earth compared to other countries? If Europeans were doing such a bad job for themselves, why do Chinese and Indians want to come live with them?

Silver, there was a very big earthquake in 2010 in Chile. The damage was not devastating. That shows building codes have been enforced for longer than a decade. After 15-20 years, results should be apparent.

"The IQ of Ashkenazi Jews is roughly the same as that of East Asians - about 105."

The research is not so clear-cut on this issue to make a definitive pronouncement as you have done. Given the tone of your comments on Inductivist's blog, I suspect that you are more interested in venom than in science.

Their blog doesn't have a comments section, but they have a contact section from which they can presumably get emails. Here's what I wrote:Racialized penal systems are not a "uniquely American failure"You used that phrase in your post "Our penal system". But you didn't provide much discussion of other polities. Julius Uzoaba has in "A Comparative Study of the Incarceration Rates of Racial Minorities in Four Common Law Countries of Canada, US, England and Wales, and Australia". Here are the last two sentences from the abstract:"Currently in Canada, the Natives constitute about 3% of the general population but 17% of prisoners in the federal system. In Australia, the Natives currently make up 2% of the population but 20% of all prisoners. African Americans currently make up 13% of the US population and a staggering 46% of the sentenced prisoners. In England and Wales (1999/2000), Blacks comprised only 2% of the general population but 10.2% of the prison population."What makes the U.S unique is the overall incarceration rate, rather than the overrepresentation of a minority population within the incarcerated population. Similarly, if you look at the former Confederate/Jim Crow states in the U.S, the ratio of the black to white incarceration rate is often even lower than in the north. Again the difference is a more generally punitive judicial system.

Most cannibal psychos are homos? Actually I was thinking that's true, just from what I've gathered from the cases. Not that there are THAT many, but still. Maybe it has something to do with being so into yourself. Homos and lesbos really, really are into themselves and their own equipment--I would guess. So perhaps that's why homosexual men, in the most extreme, psycho cases, want to consume themselves, or someone else (sadism) like themselves.

Here's the Google Wallet FAQ. From it: "You will need to have (or sign up for) Google Wallet to send or receive money. If you have ever purchased anything on Google Play, then you most likely already have a Google Wallet. If you do not yet have a Google Wallet, don’t worry, the process is simple: go to wallet.google.com and follow the steps." You probably already have a Google ID and password, which Google Wallet uses, so signing up Wallet is pretty painless.

You can put money into your Google Wallet Balance from your bank account and send it with no service fee.

Google Wallet works from both a website and a smartphone app (Android and iPhone -- the Google Wallet app is currently available only in the U.S., but the Google Wallet website can be used in 160 countries).

Or, once you sign up with Google Wallet, you can simply send money via credit card, bank transfer, or Wallet Balance as an attachment from Google's free Gmail email service. Here'show to do it.

(Non-tax deductible.)

Fourth: if you have a Wells Fargo bank account, you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Wells Fargo SurePay. Just tell WF SurePay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). (Non-tax deductible.)

Fifth: if you have a Chase bank account (or, theoretically,other bank accounts), you can transfer money to me (with no fees) via Chase QuickPay (FAQ). Just tell Chase QuickPay to send the money to my ancient AOL email address (steveslrATaol.com -- replace the AT with the usual @). If Chase asks for the name on my account, it's Steven Sailer with an n at the end of Steven. (Non-tax deductible.)

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